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An anonymous reader writes "China said that it planned to end the practice of taking organs from executed prisoners within five years, according to the state media report on Friday. Instead, China's vice minister of health Dr. Huang Jiefu said that the country will rely on a new national donation system for organ transplants at a conference in the city of Hangzhou on Thursday."

The countries that have voluntary donation programs are in a constant shortage for most organs. Taking them from people who are dead only shocks us because of antiquated remainders of religious nonsense, and not even that is thought through very well (your soul apparently doesn't need your body, so why would it need some parts?).

People who get the death sentence have a very serious debt to society. Let's ignore for the moment whether or not you agree with what people in China get the death sentence for, or the death sentence in general. Even if you don't like it, you can not deny the reality.

If you have forfeit your life to society, then why not the parts that remain? It's not like you'd have any use for them, or that taking some organs out of a corpse would be any more evil, wrong or whatever than killing someone in the first place.

Donald Trump, in I forget which TV show, estimated the value of a human body to be worth around $23 million. I for one am not going to give that away when I die, not when my family could benefit from it. Currently the hospitals don't even borther to cover funeral expenses after you give them your extremely valuable organs, which are likely worth more then the life insurance policy your making payments on. Why do we have a system like this?

I think all you would need is some kind of modified durable power of attorney in place, prior to death, that transfers ownership of your cadaver to a beneficiary who can part you out to the highest bidders. I would imagine the cryonics industry would be able to capitalize on this, they have already proven the ability to reanimate individual organs.